METH WASTE POSES DANGER

Byproducts Showing Up In Creek Beds, Along Roadsides In Rural County

REDWOOD CITY -- Several hundred miles away, a batch of
methamphetamine is brewing in a clandestine lab.

And, along with the sought-after drug, a large amount of hazardous
waste is also being produced -- a byproduct that's ending up in
creek beds and along roadsides in San Mateo County's more rural areas.

According to Dean Peterson, director of the San Mateo County Office
of Environmental Health Services, at least once a month the
Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department, which handles hazmat incidents
for the county, is asked to inspect suspicious materials discovered
by county residents in areas such as La Honda, Skylonda and Woodside.

Disguised in five-gallon buckets, water bottles and old oil
containers, methamphetamine byproducts may seem benign, however,
they can be explosive, corrosive and highly toxic, Peterson said. He
said the chances of a person being fatally injured by these
chemicals is unlikely, though they could suffer severe burns.

"We've seen what we've identified as drug lab waste for a number of
years," Peterson said.

"We had a big spike in drug lab waste in '95 and then it kind of
tapered off a bit," though "we've kind of seen an increase in the
last few years," he added. As recently as Tuesday, the San Mateo
County Narcotics Task Force, along with the Department of Justice,
responded to an area in Skylonda to investigate several items that
were possibly linked to a methamphetamine lab. The materials,
according to Narcotics Task Force Commander Mark Wyss, had the
ability to cook up to 20 pounds of methamphetamine.

Some speculate that the materials are being dumped
by methamphetamine producers operating out of the Central Valley,
but Wyss said there is no way of telling where the waste comes from,
as it is typically void of any identifying marks.

According to Casey McEnry, a Drug Enforcement Administration special
agent, an estimated six pounds of waste is produced per every pound
of methamphetamine made. According to the California Attorney
General's Office, in 1997, $8 million was spent cleaning up
hazardous waste found at 1,600 clandestine labs.

Besides the dumping of hazardous byproducts, the proliferation of
methamphetamine has garnered national attention recently with the
final phase of the Combat Methamphetamine Act going into effect last month.

The new federal law requires cold medications containing
pseudoephedrine, such as Sudafed and Claritin D, be placed behind
the counter at pharmacies. It also restricts the amount of
pseudoephedrine-containing medications that one person can buy in
one day or over the course of a month.

Law enforcement officials hope the new law will deter people from
"smurfing," which is the act of going from store to store to
purchase ingredients, such as household chemical products that can
later be used to make meth.

While the Combat Methamphetamine Act targets producers of
methamphetamine, Wyss said the number of meth labs in the county has
dropped. He said last year only seven methamphetamine labs were
located in the county. Wyss added an estimated 80 percent of
methamphetamine found in the United States now comes from
methamphetamine labs in Mexico.

The last major meth lab bust in San Mateo County occurred in May
when the county's Narcotics Task Force, along with the East Palo
Alto Police Department and other agencies, arrested six men on
suspicion they were running a methamphetamine extraction lab.

Police learned about the lab after Soledad police searched a
Watsonville man's home after he was seen buying large amounts of
pseudoephedrine pills from a local pharmacy. The man, whom
reportedly had 2,000 pseudoephedrine pills at his house, told police
about a Methamphetamine lab located in East Palo Alto.

On May 5, police searched the home and arrested East Palo Alto
residents Angel Lara Garcia, 43, Benjamin Covarrubias Ruezga, 49,
and Dimas Magana, 44, along with San Jose resident Marthel Carrillo,
28, Eureka resident Cesar Daniel Holguin, 40, and
transient Rigoberto Garcia Lara, 19.

Inside a building behind the house police found $25,000 in cash, 11
handguns, three rifles and five assault rifles. They also found
66,990 pseudoephedrine pills in packets, tens of thousands of pills
that had already been removed from the packets and 1 pound of
heroin, 1 pound of cocaine and 5 pounds of methamphetamine, police reported.

San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said
such large meth lab busts are rare in the county, though an
estimated 80 percent of the drug cases the district attorney's
office handles involve methamphetamine. He said the drug of choice
changed four or five years ago from rock cocaine to methamphetamine.

"Our case loads haven't gone up, but methamphetamine is clearly the
drug we see most often by a long shot," Wagstaffe said. "It's an
extremely addictive drug."

While methamphetamine's presence in the Bay Area and throughout
California is evident, Wyss said its popularity may dwindle as time
passes. Shirley Lamarr, a supervisor with the county's Choices
program, agreed with Wyss, calling methamphetamine a fad.

She said methamphetamine's growth mirrors every other drug-related
epidemic the Bay Area has seen.

"Five years ago ecstasy was the epidemic. Ten years ago crack
cocaine was the epidemic. Ten or 15 years ago heroine was the
epidemic," she said. "We're in a period of time where
(methamphetamine) is the epidemic right now, but it's no different
than any other epidemic we've been through."